Microsoft offering Office 2008 free trial for Mac users

Microsoft's Mac Business Unit this week is making available to Mac users a "fully functional, no strings attached" free trial of Office 2008 so that prospective buyers and users of previous versions can 'kick the tires' on new suite before plunking down the cash for a permanent copy.

The 545 megabyte download is available after a quick registration over at the Redmond-based company's MacTopia website. The registration is required to generate an trial product key that will expire 30 days thereafter.

Although Office 2008 for Mac made its debut over a year ago, this is the first time Microsoft has offered customers the option of trying the software before they buy it. The trial copy will run side-by-side with earlier versions of Office and includes a year's worth of maintenance and security improvements.

"The MacBU is aware that a number of customers have wanted to try Office 2008 for Mac before purchasing, and they have been working to make this available in tandem with updates to 2008," a representative for the software giant told AppleInsider. "Today customers can now check out Office 2008 with the fixes and performance enhancements that have been made since launch."

Once the 30-day product key expires, users will have the choice to either purchase a copy of the suite from an Apple authorized reseller or buy a product key from Mactopia online and be up and running without reinstalling.

Of course, Microsoft fragments the office suite into various versions like it does its Windows operating system. A "Home and Student Edition" costs $149.95, the standard version is priced at $399.95, and the Special Media Edition fetches 499.95. However, Amazon.com has these same editions listed for $111.99, $240.00, and $224.95, respectively. For a breakdown of what's included in each edition, see this article.

Meanwhile, readers interested in familiarizing themselves with Office 2008 and the history of Office without downloading the software may want to check out AppleInsider's six-part series: Road to Mac Office 2008.

Hahahah Free Trial for Mac owners and just buy it for PC owners. I wonder what caused them to make this move? Maybe all the Mac owners are already broke from buying their computer they cant afford the software to go along with it HAHAHAH!

Still not biting. Start offering the same educational discounts as the pc version and i'll rethink.

I will never buy it. It took me like 10 minutes just to figure out how to print a page on Windows version. I had a computer class Office 2003 couple years ago and I learned pretty well how to use it. But when I had to use that new bloated version with whole setting changed, I was happy to have iWork and OpenOffice at home. Those people at Redmond just don't get it.

Does the Mac version have that awful "ribbon" interface? No thanks... I would break down and switch to Open Office before upgrading my 2004 to 2008! MS just doesn't offer much in the compelling reasons to upgrade department.

If they wanted to make it worth an upgrade, bundling Visio for Mac would be a start...

I will never buy it. It took me like 10 minutes just to figure out how to print a page on Windows version. I had a computer class Office 2003 couple years ago and I learned pretty well how to use it. But when I had to use that new bloated version with whole setting changed, I was happy to have iWork and OpenOffice at home. Those people at Redmond just don't get it.

I've got to disagree here. I've tried iWork and OpenOffice and neither have the power or flexibility I need; numbers simply isn't as powerful as excel and lacks many, many features and OpenOffice isn't as compatible as it pretends to be.

Finally there's the issue of wasting time learning an interface; These are PRODUCTIVITY tools, any change from the normal (in my case office '04) has a negative impact on productivity.

The issue that may face microsoft is the same issue they have with windows; the previous version was very good. I will continue to use '04 until a hardware upgrade renders it useless.

I bought it, used it for a month or so, then reverted back to the old office - and iWorks.

Comparing Office and iWorks, Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint in any aspect; Pages is less powerful then Word, but has all the main features and is much less confusing; Numbers may be less powerful then Excel, but has some really niftily features that speeds up simple spreadsheet work.